It’s been a week since I turned off the TV, struggled out of my favorite chair and went … outside. No regrets, despite having to wear that back support belt my wife bought me for Christmas. It has a pouch for heat and cold packs. Wearing it makes it easier…

If you’ve just stumbled upon this newsletter, let me catch you up. I’m serializing Philip Pendleton Kennedy’s book The Blackwater Chronicle. …

Wish I had thought of serializing DHS’s The Mountains while I was reading and posting about the series earlier this year. DHS is often mistaken as The Chronicle’s author. Understandable, I suppose. He was artist behind TBC’s illustrations and he became a literary rock star writing about the same region…

You might be wondering why I’ve waited until now to mention The Blackwater Chronicle in this newsletter. After all, it’s the first of what I’ve come to think of as “The Mountain Trilogy,” which includes A Visit to the Virginian Canaan and the ten-part series The Mountains. I’ve made a…

I should have known it’d be a bad idea to start asking for paid subscriptions to The Porte Crayon Applejack Society. Now, I feel obligated to regularly push out a newsletter. The pressure to make sure you get something — ANYTHING — for your money each week is a heavy…

This, as it turns out, is one of those weeks in which I have no clue. Mrs. Applejack Society might claim that I’m clueless most weeks, so I should probably clarify. I mean to say that I don’t have a clear Porte Crayon idea to send your way for this…

I generally avoid any coffee that I don’t make myself. Nothing personal. I just like mine better. Instead of the usual method, I cold brew here at home. A few years ago, my wife gave me a carafe made for the process after watching the mess I made using a…

Sit down and pour yourself some applejack. This week’s PCAS newsletter is coming to you a bit early because today is the 134th anniversary of David Hunter Strother’s death at age 71. He was living in Charles Town at the time. He caught a cold. It morphed into pneumonia. It…

Welcome to the final installment of David Hunter Strother’s The Mountains, in which the Old South’s ideas about medieval chivalry are on full display — and even mocked a little bit. The tenth part takes place beneath the shadow of Hampshire County’s Ice Mountain, so named because you can find…